The Making of Arguments eBook

5. Find a proposition in which the two sides
to a debate might in good faith pass each other without
meeting. Make it over so that the issue would
be unavoidable.

6. Frame a proposition in which the burden of
proof would not be on the affirmative. Make it
over so that the burden of proof would fall on the
affirmative.

7. Draw up a scheme for a debate on one of the
propositions in Exercise 4, with a tentative assignment
of points to three debaters on a side.

8. Draw up a set of instructions to judges for
an intercollegiate or interscholastic debate, so framed
as to produce a decision on the points which seem
to you the most important.

9. Prepare yourself for a five-minute extemporaneous
speech on a subject on which you have written an argument.

10. Name three questions on which you could not,
without violence to your convictions, argue on more
than one side.

APPENDIX I

EXAMPLES OF ARGUMENT

THE THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE[67]

THOMAS H. HUXLEY

This is the first of three lectures which make a continuous
argument, which were delivered in New York. September
18, 20, and 22, 1876. It should therefore be
regarded as the introductory part of the argument;
and as a matter of fact it does not get to Huxley’s
positive proof, but is occupied with disposing of
the other theories. This refutation finished,
Huxley was then at liberty to go ahead with the affirmative
argument, as he indicates in the last paragraph of
the lecture.

The argument is a notable piece of reasoning on a
scientific subject, in terms which make it intelligible
to all educated men. When Huxley spoke, the heat
which had been kindled by the first announcement of
the theory of evolution in Darwin’s “Origin
of Species” was still blazing; and there were
many church people who held that the theory was subversive
of religion, without giving themselves the trouble
to understand it. This timid frame of mind explains
Hurley’s mode of approach to the subject.

We live in and form part of a system of things of
immense diversity and perplexity, which we call Nature;
and it is a matter of the deepest interest to all
of us that we should form just conceptions of the
constitution of that system and of its past history.
With relation to this universe, man is, in extent,
little more than a mathematical point: in duration
but a fleeting shadow: he is a mere reed shaken
in the winds of force. But, as Pascal long ago
remarked, although a mere reed, he is a thinking reed;
and in virtue of that wonderful capacity of thought,
he has the power of framing for himself a symbolic
conception of the universe, which, although doubtless
highly imperfect and inadequate as a picture of the
great whole, is yet sufficient to serve him as a chart